During the first funding period the overall goal of the Pennington NORC was to facilitate and promote collaborative and multi-disciplinary interactions that will foster new research ideas and enhance the translation of basic nutritional research findings into the clinical arena and ultimately into practical application. We achieved this goal with the guidance of an External Advisory Board (See Section I - Table AC-4) who met with us annually. In 2004, at the time of the first application, the Research Base came from 27 grants funded by the NIH. More specifically, 11 grants were planned to make use of the Human Pheonotyping Core, 17 the Molecular Mechanisms Core and 13 the Animal Phenotyping Cores. In total, these 27 grants represented $11,430,879 for the year 2004/2005 in direct costs. In the five year period of the grant, there has been an increase in the NORC Research Base. The growth is depicted in the figure above. At the time of this competitive renewal submission, the Research Base is $16,538,539 in NIH funding for year 2008-2009 (see Exhibit III) and another yearly $17,325,475 pending funding. Furthermore, another $15,875,556 comes from: 1) Other government agencies such as the Department of Defense, the USDA 2) Societies such as ADA, AHA, The Obesity Society. 3) Private contracts from Food Companies and Pharmaceutical companies. 4) Philanthropic mechanisms. In summary, over the past 4-5 years of the NORC grant, the Research Base Funding went from $18,403,447 to $32,414,095 in direct costs, i.e. a 76% increase.